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Re: INFO: Disney lawsuit

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From: steven
Date: Feb 26, 2011 9:48AM

Do you know if it is legal to allow any content to not be accessible? Not
that I am encouraging content to not be accessible, but alot of nature is
simply not accessible and everything man does is in nature's image. I am
just wondering if websites in particular, can be undoubtedly and enforceably
accessible, to be challenged by law?

For example, Disney content is largely visual. Flash technology is still
often best suited for displaying visual content without creative limitation.
Flash content (I love Flash by the way) as an entertainment media is largely
built with visual priority in mind, thus I think most web users who have
encountered Flash entertainment content will have a general expectation
having used it a few times. Thus I am not sure exactly what the problem is
with Disney's content in this instance, other than to say that "in an ideal
world" (which also happens to be the fashionable goal of HTML5 right now) it
could be done another way. And if it was, it likely wouldn't look like it
does ... and being that any person's interest in Disney is the result of
Disney having been allowed to create work as they deemed most likely to
capture our interest in the first place (no compromise), I can't see a
reason to do compromise in this instance, without expecting their product to
'possibly' be portrayed in a less appealing light than the people that would
otherwise be drawn to their products and website would be, in the first
place.

My opinion is also hypothetical, so I find it really interesting to
genuinely feel comfortable between this black and white issue of accessible
web content, as a designer and developer. Is taking Disney to court because
a Flash website is 'still' largely made in an inaccessible way? Whatever the
correct answer, can we really agree on what content will constitute as
content that needs to be accessible to all? afterall, our society doesn't
add lifts to all neighbourhood trees in the off chance that one child in a
wheelchair might want to climb the trees like all the other kids in the
neighbourhood. I know this is a rather flimsy analogy, but I genuinely think
web accessibility has some serious hurdles being that it has been grown in
an often inaccessible world.

Regards,

Steven